Nick Zangwill
- Published in print:
- 2007
- Published Online:
- September 2007
- ISBN:
- 9780199261871
- eISBN:
- 9780191718670
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199261871.003.0004
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Aesthetics
This chapter articulates and defends the view that a work of art is the intentional product of aesthetic creative thought. The view, roughly, is that someone has an insight into an ...
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This chapter articulates and defends the view that a work of art is the intentional product of aesthetic creative thought. The view, roughly, is that someone has an insight into an aesthetic/non-aesthetic dependency, and then intentionally endows something with aesthetic properties in virtue of the non-aesthetic properties. The chapter gives an account of aesthetic insight and aesthetic action. The account of aesthetic action is an instance of a familiar means-end model of rational deliberation. But the account of aesthetic creative insight is non-rational, and it coincides with traditional accounts of genius. The chapter defends the notion of creative genius against claims made by sociologists of art.Less
This chapter articulates and defends the view that a work of art is the intentional product of aesthetic creative thought. The view, roughly, is that someone has an insight into an aesthetic/non-aesthetic dependency, and then intentionally endows something with aesthetic properties in virtue of the non-aesthetic properties. The chapter gives an account of aesthetic insight and aesthetic action. The account of aesthetic action is an instance of a familiar means-end model of rational deliberation. But the account of aesthetic creative insight is non-rational, and it coincides with traditional accounts of genius. The chapter defends the notion of creative genius against claims made by sociologists of art.
Linda M. G. Zerilli
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- September 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780226397849
- eISBN:
- 9780226398037
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226398037.003.0002
- Subject:
- Political Science, Political Theory
Examines the aesthetic turn in contemporary democratic theory as it bears on the question of judgment. Hume's argument in "Of the Standard of Taste" is examined with an eye to the limitations of a ...
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Examines the aesthetic turn in contemporary democratic theory as it bears on the question of judgment. Hume's argument in "Of the Standard of Taste" is examined with an eye to the limitations of a noncognitivist conception of judging value. Kant's response to Hume in Critique of Judgment is then explored as posing a radical but ultimately unsatisfying alternative to Hume's projectivist metaphysic. Developing the theme of affective response as it emerges from the work of Hume and Kant, the chapter then turn to Wittgenstein's reflections on aesthetics. Less encumbered by the thought that aesthetic response cannot be rule-governed than were Hume or Kant, Wittgenstein examines the role of context and the plurality of language games which involve our affective natures.Less
Examines the aesthetic turn in contemporary democratic theory as it bears on the question of judgment. Hume's argument in "Of the Standard of Taste" is examined with an eye to the limitations of a noncognitivist conception of judging value. Kant's response to Hume in Critique of Judgment is then explored as posing a radical but ultimately unsatisfying alternative to Hume's projectivist metaphysic. Developing the theme of affective response as it emerges from the work of Hume and Kant, the chapter then turn to Wittgenstein's reflections on aesthetics. Less encumbered by the thought that aesthetic response cannot be rule-governed than were Hume or Kant, Wittgenstein examines the role of context and the plurality of language games which involve our affective natures.
Edward Nye
- Published in print:
- 2000
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198160120
- eISBN:
- 9780191673788
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198160120.003.0004
- Subject:
- Literature, European Literature, Criticism/Theory
Condillac is rarely given the credit he deserves for the range of his interests, with the result that his recurring subject of inquiry is often overlooked. Condillac finds that an unavoidable issue ...
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Condillac is rarely given the credit he deserves for the range of his interests, with the result that his recurring subject of inquiry is often overlooked. Condillac finds that an unavoidable issue in his recurring interest in the representation of ideas is artistic imitation, and this becomes most apparent when we do justice to the range of his interests and consider a number of his works in parallel with each other. This chapter focuses on two works the Essai sur l'origine des connoissances humaines (1746) and the Art d'écrire (1798). The first is an abstract study of epistemology; the second is a practical discussion of literary style. They come together, however, in their shared terminology and concepts, and it is this middle ground which we may call Condillac's aesthetic thought. His theories are another example of how far the idea of imitation can be stretched to accommodate a variety of approaches.Less
Condillac is rarely given the credit he deserves for the range of his interests, with the result that his recurring subject of inquiry is often overlooked. Condillac finds that an unavoidable issue in his recurring interest in the representation of ideas is artistic imitation, and this becomes most apparent when we do justice to the range of his interests and consider a number of his works in parallel with each other. This chapter focuses on two works the Essai sur l'origine des connoissances humaines (1746) and the Art d'écrire (1798). The first is an abstract study of epistemology; the second is a practical discussion of literary style. They come together, however, in their shared terminology and concepts, and it is this middle ground which we may call Condillac's aesthetic thought. His theories are another example of how far the idea of imitation can be stretched to accommodate a variety of approaches.
Grace E. Lavery
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- January 2020
- ISBN:
- 9780691183626
- eISBN:
- 9780691189963
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Princeton University Press
- DOI:
- 10.23943/princeton/9780691183626.003.0003
- Subject:
- Literature, World Literature
This chapter follows Michel Foucault's distinction between a “history of ideas” and a “history of thought.” It treats the aestheticism of the late 19th century as representing the social form of ...
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This chapter follows Michel Foucault's distinction between a “history of ideas” and a “history of thought.” It treats the aestheticism of the late 19th century as representing the social form of aesthetics itself. Here, the chapter argues that it was through the embodied and socially embedded practices of cultivating beauty that the exquisite limits of aesthetic thinking were formulated as a historical problematic. By this, the chapter contends that while British aestheticism's engagement with Japan plugged into the hole of Kantian subjective universal, by supplying a set of objects immediately, absolutely, and universally legible as beautiful, it also brought painfully close to home the narcissistic threat of the Other Empire. Thus, one essential element of the idea of Japan for Victorians was that, by the paradoxical virtue of being extremely far away, it could flesh out and formalize relations that were ruinously close.Less
This chapter follows Michel Foucault's distinction between a “history of ideas” and a “history of thought.” It treats the aestheticism of the late 19th century as representing the social form of aesthetics itself. Here, the chapter argues that it was through the embodied and socially embedded practices of cultivating beauty that the exquisite limits of aesthetic thinking were formulated as a historical problematic. By this, the chapter contends that while British aestheticism's engagement with Japan plugged into the hole of Kantian subjective universal, by supplying a set of objects immediately, absolutely, and universally legible as beautiful, it also brought painfully close to home the narcissistic threat of the Other Empire. Thus, one essential element of the idea of Japan for Victorians was that, by the paradoxical virtue of being extremely far away, it could flesh out and formalize relations that were ruinously close.
Zehou Li
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- November 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780824833077
- eISBN:
- 9780824870706
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Hawai'i Press
- DOI:
- 10.21313/hawaii/9780824833077.001.0001
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Asian Studies
The author has been an influential thinker in China since the 1950s. Before moving to the United States in the wake of the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989, he published works on Emmanuel Kant and ...
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The author has been an influential thinker in China since the 1950s. Before moving to the United States in the wake of the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989, he published works on Emmanuel Kant and traditional and contemporary Chinese philosophy. This book, a translation of his Huaxia meixue (1989), is considered among the author's most significant works. Apart from its value as an introduction to the philosophy of one of contemporary China's foremost intellectuals, the book fills an important gap in the literature of Chinese aesthetics in English. It presents the author's synthesis of the entire trajectory of Chinese aesthetic thought, from ancient times to the early modern period. The book touches on all areas of artistic activity, including poetry, painting, calligraphy, architecture, and the “art of living.” Right government, the ideal human being, and the path to spiritual transcendence all come under the provenance of aesthetic thought. According to the author this was the case from early Confucian explanations of poetry as that which gives expression to intent, through Zhuangzi's artistic depictions of the ideal personality who discerns the natural way of things and lives according to it, to Chan Buddhist-inspired notions that nature and words can come together to yield insight and enlightenment. This book demonstrates conclusively the fundamental role of aesthetics in the development of the cultural and psychological structures in Chinese culture that define “humanity.”Less
The author has been an influential thinker in China since the 1950s. Before moving to the United States in the wake of the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989, he published works on Emmanuel Kant and traditional and contemporary Chinese philosophy. This book, a translation of his Huaxia meixue (1989), is considered among the author's most significant works. Apart from its value as an introduction to the philosophy of one of contemporary China's foremost intellectuals, the book fills an important gap in the literature of Chinese aesthetics in English. It presents the author's synthesis of the entire trajectory of Chinese aesthetic thought, from ancient times to the early modern period. The book touches on all areas of artistic activity, including poetry, painting, calligraphy, architecture, and the “art of living.” Right government, the ideal human being, and the path to spiritual transcendence all come under the provenance of aesthetic thought. According to the author this was the case from early Confucian explanations of poetry as that which gives expression to intent, through Zhuangzi's artistic depictions of the ideal personality who discerns the natural way of things and lives according to it, to Chan Buddhist-inspired notions that nature and words can come together to yield insight and enlightenment. This book demonstrates conclusively the fundamental role of aesthetics in the development of the cultural and psychological structures in Chinese culture that define “humanity.”
Lucy Hartley
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- March 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780199560615
- eISBN:
- 9780191803499
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:osobl/9780199560615.003.0020
- Subject:
- Literature, 19th-century and Victorian Literature
This chapter shows how aesthetic thinking was central to discussions of the value, interest, and pleasure of literature in the period from 1820 to 1880, and especially for the status of the novel as ...
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This chapter shows how aesthetic thinking was central to discussions of the value, interest, and pleasure of literature in the period from 1820 to 1880, and especially for the status of the novel as an art form. While aesthetic theories were linked to theories of the novel in responding to the conditions of modernity, there was no defining aesthetic theory with respect to the novel. Instead, there were a conglomeration of ideas and opinions about the role of the artist, the moral responsibility of the arts, the pleasure of the senses, and the value of beauty, character, and selection. At issue throughout was the cultural authority of the novel as an arbiter of taste.Less
This chapter shows how aesthetic thinking was central to discussions of the value, interest, and pleasure of literature in the period from 1820 to 1880, and especially for the status of the novel as an art form. While aesthetic theories were linked to theories of the novel in responding to the conditions of modernity, there was no defining aesthetic theory with respect to the novel. Instead, there were a conglomeration of ideas and opinions about the role of the artist, the moral responsibility of the arts, the pleasure of the senses, and the value of beauty, character, and selection. At issue throughout was the cultural authority of the novel as an arbiter of taste.
